by Tamara Leigh
“I have no experience with a woman’s hair,” he said, “so you must needs be patient.”
Then, in this, Constance had not been first.
Silly, petty, El silently chastised, even as she relaxed beneath his ministrations. Closing her eyes, she lowered her chin to better experience the pleasurable sensation of being so lovingly—
Lovingly? It could not be that. Still, it was wonderful that it should feel that way.
Dear Lord, is Your hand in this? Did I well enough pay the price of being wed to one beast that I might now know kindness and consideration from one who only appeared to be a beast? For whom I feel—
She jerked her thoughts aside, certain she could not feel that for Bayard. Were it even possible, such emotions could not so soon come upon her.
I am needy, that is all, she told herself. Too long in the dark of Murdoch’s cruelty. Too long in the healing light of Magnus’s generosity. Too long waiting to feel the slightest breath of girlhood dreams of a love like that of Tristan and Iseult…Abelard and Heloise…
She caught her breath, surprised her thoughts had gone to fanciful tales she had scorned and buried deep once the reality of married life had closed its fingers around her throat.
“Elianor?”
She opened her eyes, looked past her slung arm to her clenched right hand in her lap, heard her breath move quickly in and out.
Bayard moved to her side again. “Are you pained?”
Not as he thought. She met his gaze. “Nay. Not an hour ago, the physician prepared a draught that eased my discomfort.”
“Then?”
She searched for something other than the truth, shrugged. “’Tis just my thoughts. So much has happened that they chase one another hither and thither, disturbing me as I should not allow them to do.”
“You must needs leave them in the past.”
She blinked. “Can you, Bayard?”
“’Tis that for which I pray.”
Much maligned, Lady Maeve had told, and it made El’s throat tighten. “Then I shall also pray.”
He inclined his head, returned to her back, and once more worked to put order to her hair.
“I did not find your ring in the inner walls,” he said as she began to relax.
She glanced over her shoulder. “It must be there.”
“It is not.”
She touched her bare finger. “Do you think Agatha—?”
“I think you require one that better fits,” he said. “Worry no more on it.” Then he asked, “Are you well with Rollo’s watch over you?”
El was only momentarily offended by his change of subject, for it was in keeping with what was becoming his tendency to protect her. “’Tis disconcerting to have him so close upon my heels, but I do not feel amiss with him, and he… Despite his size and the numerous weapons he carries, he seems a gentle soul.”
“He is—providing he is not riled. Rest assured, should any try to harm you while you are in his keeping, his gentle soul will turn brutal. Indeed, had he been present at Castle Mathe when my sister leapt upon De Arell, much blood would have been shed ere she could be made his prisoner—if made a prisoner at all.”
“He is a most curious person. How did he come to be in your service?”
“By way of Lady Maeve. Though she refuses to acknowledge him as her half-brother, my father was certain Rollo was Denis Foucault’s baseborn son.”
Then Archard Boursier had made further atonement for the betrayal of his liege by taking Rollo into his household?
Bayard paused to work through a tangle at the crown of her head. “As you have surely noted,” he said, “he is a bit simple-minded. However, upon discovering the youth exhibited an unusual facility with weapons and fighting, my father trained him up into a man-at-arms. He has served our family well.”
A secret made known to her.
“The comb runs smooth down to the ends,” he said. “And that is as capable as I am of setting a woman’s hair to rights.”
As neither could she manage a braid, it would have to hang loose about her shoulders, but the veil would provide the modesty required of one who was wed and should only be seen “in her hair” by her husband.
Before she could thank him for his aid, he lifted its mass, causing cool air to brush her nape.
“You have beautiful hair,” he murmured, and when she looked up, he lowered his face to it and breathed deep.
A quiver went through her. “It has taken years to grow it long again.”
He went still, as she did when she realized what path she had led him down.
“He cut it?” Bayard growled.
Though relieved she was not the recipient of the anger pulsing from him, she longed to speak of anything but that.
’Tis too late now to take another path, El. Tell him and be done.
“Nay, I cut it.”
His brow darkened further, and now it seemed his anger moved toward her, as if he thought she lied.
“’Tis true,” she hastened. “And I did not do a good job of it.” She reached to the back of her neck, ran a finger across the scar. “The knife was dull, though not so much when it slipped.”
He touched the place she indicated, so lightly it felt like a feather.
“Why did you cut your hair?”
“Rebellion. He was always wrenching at it to control me when I…fought him. Too, he was fond of my hair, and I decided to take it from him as he had taken so much from me.”
“And were punished for it.” It was so darkly said El knew that were Murdoch alive, his days would number only as many as it took Bayard to root him out.
“I was, but never did I regret doing it, for it made me feel I was not lost, that I was still in here somewhere.” She laid a hand to her chest. “Often cowering—though I refused him the satisfaction of knowing just how much—but still I was not so lost I could not find myself if I looked very hard.”
“You never stopped fighting him?”
It was not really a question. Despite such short acquaintance, Bayard knew her. “Only when it gained me something I badly needed, such as mercy upon a servant, a walk in the garden, a chance to meet Agatha so she might gift me with her powders.”
Gaze darkening, Bayard let her hair fall and took a step back.
She shifted around on the chair to face him. “I am moved that you are concerned with my plight, but ’tis in the past—”
He slammed his hands to the back of her chair and dropped his head between his outstretched arms. “Miscreant,” he choked. “Knave! Swine!”
Now he was the one breathing sharp and fast, the wood beneath her quaking as if it might not long resist being reduced to a pile of sticks.
El touched his hand. “Bayard—”
“’Twas not enough that so depraved a being rendered you untouchable, but to make you a prisoner in your own home!”
El nearly protested being untouchable. After all, she near—nay, not near—craved Bayard’s kisses. But, as was his right, he wanted more.
As do I, she silently acknowledged. I want to know it can be different, that even if it is not pleasurable, it will not hurt or humiliate. I want to lie in his arms, my head on his chest, his heart beating beneath my ear.
Bayard jerked his chin up, startling her out of her imaginings. “When we arrived at Adderstone and I told that you were home, you near asked if ever you would be allowed outside its walls. Am I right?”
She moistened her lips. “Aye.”
“You thought I also meant to make you a prisoner.”
“I hoped you would not.”
“Then Murdoch Farrow is not in the past, is he, Elianor? Whatever I do, you think first of what he might do and clothe me in his sins. Almighty! Were he not already dead—”
The chair quaked more violently, making her long for his hands in her hair again, for him to untangle her strand by strand. But on the matter of Murdoch, she must defend herself, and not angrily as she would have done days earlier.
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�I do compare you to him, though far less now than when first we met.” Remembering the night she had unmanned Bayard and felt his hand at her throat, she momentarily closed her eyes. “I gave you cause to rouse your wrath, just as you gave me cause to believe I ought to fear you—threatening me with ill, telling me I should cower and tremble for what I had wrought.”
He raised his head higher, and she was encouraged to see some of the blue returned to his gaze and feel the quake become a tremble.
“I now believe they were but words,” she continued. “But I had no reason not to believe it then.” She settled her hand upon his, felt the ridged veins beneath his flesh. “You are right. Murdoch is not as much in my past as I would have him be, but neither is Constance in your past.”
A frown bunched his brow. “’Tis hardly possible with her once more beneath my roof!”
“This I know, but even were she not here, still you would compare me to her, just as you did when first we met.”
“With good reason! Six days you imprisoned me in that godforsaken cell that I might forfeit all!”
She could not argue that. “You had reason to despise me, and I have only the excuse of having believed the same as my uncle did of what Agatha told of your relationship with my aunt. Just as I feared you might make of me a prisoner, I near lost my breath at the thought of once more suffering the cruel attentions of a beast.”
He stared at her.
“Bayard,” she said softly, “when I laid plans to see your lands forfeited, it was for fear of what you would do to me if you took me to wife. By the time I learned you intended to wed De Arell’s daughter, I had already enlisted Agatha and all was set in motion. Thus, she reasoned—and I with her—that if we stayed the course and your lands were forfeited, we would save Lady Thomasin from an abusive marriage and my uncle from wedding the sister of the man I believed you to be.” El’s throat tightened so suddenly, it hurt. “A man you have not been to me.”
Blessedly, his continued silence seemed born not of anger but of thought, for the chair stilled and the color in his face began to recede. Then he straightened and stepped near again. “We are both of us haunted,” he said, “just as we have both made mistakes—as when I pressed your aunt into a marriage she did not wish—but I believe you and I can make a good marriage. Do you, Elianor?”
A good marriage. It was greedy to want better, but she did. “I believe we can.”
He drew his hand from beneath hers and laid it to her cheek. “I am sorry for what he did to you, and not only because his brutality holds you from me.” He slid his fingers to her neck. “And I am sorry I frightened and hurt you.”
Then he also remembered her attack upon him that had ended with his hand spanning her neck. She shook her head and struggled for words to assure him it had been nothing compared to—
Leave me be, Murdoch, she silently pleaded. Go away—so distant, so dark, so deep that never can you find your way back to me. To us.
“Elianor?”
Bayard wavered above her as if she looked at him through water. And she did, unable to keep tears from her eyes.
“Pray, do not,” he groaned.
How she wished she could obey, but things inside her were breaking free. “Forgive me,” she gasped and, feeling her face crumple, gripped a hand over it.
Bayard lowered beside her. As a sob loosed itself from her chest, he drew her into his arms and gently pulled her hand from her face. He kissed her nose, her brow, pressed her head to his chest, and held her near as a keening sound rose from her.
El hated herself for it, that it was loud and ugly, but all the pain and terror and sorrow would not be put back in its bottle—a bottle she had not realized was so full when she had flung it to her depths.
Bayard cradled his wife, and as she wailed and wet his chest with tears, thought there was nothing he wanted more than that she never again suffer such hurt. And if that meant he could not ever truly have her—
Never have her? Never be man and wife as it was ordained? Impossible. He sought God, but not so far as to don a monk’s habit. He wanted this woman, to fall asleep in the night with her tucked against his chest…awaken in the morn curved against her back…for her to be mother to his children.
It shall come to pass, he assured himself as her cries began to ease. I will be patient, and she will grow accustomed to my touch.
“Milord?”
Bayard jerked, for though he immediately identified the voice, he did not yield up his guard so completely that one had to call to him as if to rouse him from a deep sleep.
He peered over his shoulder at the one in the doorway. No matter how loud Elianor’s cries, only Rollo would dare enter unbidden knowing his lord was within. But that was because he did not truly dare. He simply acted on protective instincts.
“Is…?” The big man’s shoulders twitched with a nervous shrug, and he put his head to the side as if that slight movement might enable him to see more of Elianor. “Is my lady well?”
“Fear not, Rollo. I am tending her.”
The man-at-arms bobbed his chin. “That is God,” he said, replacing the word good with God as he often did, and taking a step back.
As Bayard started to return his attention to the one who continued to empty her grief as if unaware of anything beyond it, he caught movement that brought his head back around.
A woman pushed past Rollo and would have flung herself across the solar if not that the man-at-arms clamped a hand on her.
It was Constance, doubtless roused by Elianor’s cries, and coming behind her were the men Magnus had set to watch over her chamber. Rollo dealt with the first by thrusting an elbow up and back into the man’s face, and before the confrontation could get out of hand, Bayard dealt with the second by calling, “Release her, Rollo!”
He did not want that woman here—by all that was holy, he did not—but more, he wanted Elianor to remain ignorant of her audience. Fortunately, her uncle had not also come running, meaning he was not abovestairs.
Though freed, Constance stood unmoving and stared at Bayard, while in back of her, Rollo braced to defend the solar where he now faced her second guard.
The woman who had first shared this chamber with Bayard stepped forward, and his anger began to uncoil.
“Leave,” he growled, wishing he could shout it.
She faltered, but continued forward. And he had no choice but to let her come.
Halting alongside him, she shifted her gaze to Elianor whose face was pressed hard to his chest and right hand clenched on the lapel of his robe.
Bayard nearly repeated his command, but in her eyes saw what he did not want to be concern lest it soften him toward her.
He tensed further. What he did not want was what was needed were she not to come between Elianor and him. As Father Crispin had once more urged on the night past, God would have him see, feel, think, be, forgive—
Jaw aching with the meeting of his teeth, he told himself that even if Constance and he could not forgive each other, what was hard in him could bear softening.
He drew a deep breath. “Be not anxious. I have her.”
Eyes shifting between Elianor and him, she pulled her lower lip between her teeth.
“Constance,” he tried again, “You know I will not harm her.”
A despondent smile turned her lips, and she inclined her head. She did know, for he had never given her cause to believe otherwise. She turned and, moments later, the door closed.
Bayard rubbed Elianor’s back, stroked her hair, and murmured things he would have thought only a desperate man would allow to pass his lips.
And Elianor quieted and came back to him.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. “I did not know that much was inside me—not after all these years.”
“’Tis good it is out.”
She drew back and lifted her face toward his. Her cheeks, nose, and eyes were red, the latter swollen, but though she had never looked less beautiful, he thought her lovely. And dear.
He cupped her face in his palm. How was it possible they could be so changed? How had they moved from fury, hatred, distrust, and fear to dear? And after Constance, why did he allow himself to be so moved? He had vowed to never again fall under a woman’s power, yet here he was thinking first of the one in his arms.
“It is good,” she said. “Still…”
“Aye?”
“I am sorry I am”—her voice caught—“broken.”
He frowned. “I do not believe that of you, Elianor. Were you, we would not be here like this.”
She smiled sadly. “If not broken, then bent.”
He pondered that and thought there could be no better word to describe his own state following the failure of his first marriage. “All are bent, Elianor, some more than others. The good of it is that something bent can often be pushed back into shape. Perhaps a better shape.” Such was that to which Father Crispin had applied himself to pull Bayard back from the brink. Had he gone over it, the feud would surely have escalated, possibly resulting in death. The priest’s patient counsel and instruction in humility and prayer had been a means of unbending Bayard and easing him into a shape more pleasing to God. Though the work was hardly complete, there was enough progress that a Boursier and a Verdun stood to spend the remainder of their lives together. And not as enemies.
“I hope ’tis so,” Elianor said, “for I do not wish to be untouchable.”
He nearly assured her she was not, for she had allowed him to more than touch her, but it was as he had named her when his anger had boiled in light of the abuse she had suffered at that knave’s hands.
A breath shuddered out of her. “After what he did to me—”
Bayard slid his thumb to her lips, gently pressed them. “Unless you truly wish to speak of it, no more need be told.”
Slowly, she nodded.
As he lowered his hand, he let his gaze linger upon her mouth and told himself there would be other and better times to kiss her.
But Elianor did not think so, sliding her hand to his shoulder, pulling herself up, and placing her mouth so near his that when she whispered, “Not untouchable,” her lips brushed his.
He stared into her green eyes, saw the uncertainty that made them waver, realized she did not breathe as if for fear he would gainsay her.